Q is for ?
by CeffylDrwg
Summary: John interviews a new flatmate. One-shot. An unofficial sequel to my first Bondlock story, "M is for Mummy," but it can definitely Stand Alone. No slash/non-canon pairings. Sorta angsty but hopefully not too depressing.


**AN: This is the unofficial sequel to "M is for Mummy", meaning that it operates in the same universe/AU canon, but it can stand alone. This is much more angsty than the first one, but hopefully you still find it amusing. As with the first, there are no slash/non-canon pairings, because I personally feel like it's important not to devalue friendship. That said, if it's your cup of tea, I'm pretty sure you could read multiple different ships into this Gen Fic.**

**I also am blatantly not British and have no beta, so I apologize for any errors I missed on my numerous self-edits. **

"I'm only in for a moment, Mrs. Hudson," John called as he entered the flat, his eyes still cast down at his keys as put them away. "Then I'm off to –"

The keys clacked to the ground. Two beats of noise as each key hit the floor of 221b Baker Street, and then silence. John could only stare – he couldn't speak for lack of air – at the unmistakable mess of curly back hair and long, willowy body of the man standing across the room. The figure's back was to John as he gazed out the window.

It took three seconds for the illusion to shatter. Three seconds for the man to hear the noise and spin around to face John. Three seconds for John to realize that despite the "unmistakable" hair, he had been mistaken, that the bespectacled blue eyes weren't quite blue enough, and that the cheekbones really just weren't sharp enough. The resemblance was astonishing, truly, but this obviously younger man was most definitely not the one he had first assumed him to be.

Which then, of course, begged the question: who was this man and what was he doing in his flat?

"You must be John." Oh God, even his voice was similar in that not-very-similar-at-all-way.

"Yes… How did you get in here?" John asked, his eyes narrowing in the mistrust he had adopted to mask his disappointment.

"I let him in dear," Mrs. Hudson announced as she reached the top of the stairs and entered the room. "This is… what was it, dear? Adam? Andrew?"

"Anthony. Anthony Blunt."

"Yes, Anthony. He's interested in sharing the flat with you."

"I saw your ad in the papers," the man – Anthony - interjected. "The apartment is quite small for the asking price, but the location is absolutely unbeatable. I work just down the block."

"I didn't… I didn't put an ad in the papers." John turned to Mrs. Hudson in horror. He couldn't even imagine living with another roommate, let alone one who reminded him so much of… _him_.

"No, deary, I did. You're like family now, but without the full rent each month, I'll go broke."

It was true, John realized. Since… that day… John had remained at the flat but continued to pay the same sum he'd been paying before, when there were two of them to shoulder the cost. In the aftermath of what had happened, it hadn't even occurred to him that Mrs. Hudson had been letting him stay on charity, or that her charity might eventually start to run out.

"If this is a bad time, I can just…" Anthony looked around the room uncomfortably.

"No, no, this is fine," John assured him. "I just, I wasn't expecting you."

"I'll leave you two to get to know each other then. I really should get back to my soaps. You really wouldn't believe what Edith's been up to. Just let me know when you've decided whether or not you'll take the room, dear," Mrs. Hudson chirped before shuffling out, muttering something under her breath about the latest episode of Downton Abbey.

The pair stole glances at each other without ever making eye contact.

"So, who were you expecting?" Anthony broke the silence at last.

"What?"

"You said you weren't expecting me. Who were you expecting instead?"

John lifted his left hand to his face absentmindedly, his ring finger rolling in ward to rest on his lips. "Oh, no one. I was just…. I'm meeting a friend later, but I thought you were… I… never mind."

Another moment of awkward silence. John watched as Anthony surveyed the room. He halfheartedly wondered what Anthony would have thought of it before the skulls and pickled eyes and the like had been boxed up and stored. Now the flat seemed perfectly ordinary, as though the only people who had ever lived in it had lived perfectly ordinary lives with perfectly ordinary jobs. John pondered this, finding himself, to his surprise, mourning the days when instead of food, he only found preserved heads and bacteria cultures in his fridge.

Anthony once again snapped John from his musings as the tall man migrated to the kitchen. "I hate to cook. I'd much rather order in food than be forced to make it myself. I find it rather dull. Do you cook?"

"Oh, um, sort of. We usually go out once or twice on the weekends, but we try to eat healthier during the week."

"We? You and Mrs. Hudson?" Anthony sounded mildly interested but mostly bored.

"Me and my girlfriend, Mary." John corrected him, bristling slightly at the idea that this stranger thought him so alone he had only his landlady to eat with.

"Yes, of course." Anthony popped open the fridge absently and observed its contents before moving back into the living room. "Do you play?" he asked, motioning to the violin.

"Oh, I, uh… a little," John admitted. He was worried for a moment that Anthony would ask him to play something, but the dark-haired man had already moved on to inspecting the next element of the house.

"There are bullet holes in the wall," he observed, tracing his fingers over them like they were secrets written in braille. "Do you own a weapon? I personally have always felt safer without one in the house. Too prone to error. I believe much more lasting protection can be gained in more… modern… ways these days anyway."

John's eyes darted to the desk drawer next to his armchair. "I used to be a soldier. Old habits die hard I guess… What do you mean, 'modern ways'?"

"And that explains the cane," Anthony observed, ignoring the question all together.

John looked down at his cane as though he had just remembered he was still using it. "Oh yes… I was shot." He waited for the inevitable 'pity response' that without fail followed this admission. It never came; Anthony had turned his back to John and was examining the pictures Mary had insisted John hang on the wall ("This room needs some cheering up," she had maintained as she thrust open the heavy curtains that had been blocking the exterior light from penetrating the room. "You're living like a vampire in here. Come back to the world of the living." He hadn't reclosed the curtains since).

A swift, two beat rap on the door immediately reminded John of the reason why he hadn't planned to stay long.

"The friend you were expecting," Anthony guessed.

"Yes – an old army buddy. We're meeting for lunch," John explained as he unlocked the door.

"Hello John."

"James. You look well."

"And you. I'm terribly sorry about… you know…"

"Yes… thank you. I was just finishing up an interview with a potential flat mate. Why don't you come on in?"

John opened the door wider to admit his friend.

"James, this is Anthony Blunt," John introduced the two men. "Anthony, James Bond."

"Pleased to meet you, _Anthony_." James reached out an arm to shake hands.

Anthony stared dumbly at James for half a beat, before reaching out his own hand and firmly shaking the offered one. " The pleasure is mine, _James_."

James smirked almost imperceptibly, as though he was privy to some inside joke, causing John to wonder for a moment if perhaps the pair had met before. But, of course, that was impossible. They had only just been introduced now.

"You know," began Anthony, who hadn't taken his eyes off of James since he had entered the room. "I really don't think this living arrangement will work out. I'm sorry to have wasted your time. I'll see myself out." Anthony straightened his glasses and squeezed past James.

"Wait!" John called after him, but Anthony either didn't hear him or didn't care enough to stop. "Well that was… odd." John observed as he turned back to face James. "I can't say I'm too beat up that's gone."

"He looked much too young to be reliable anyway," James stated. "The kind of man who drinks his tea in his pajamas. I'm pretty sure he still had spots."

"That's one way to put it," John chuckled. "So, where shall we go for lunch?"

"What did you tell them your name was?" The tall, well cheek-boned man, inquired from a stool when the slightly smaller, similar looking man entered the kitchen.

"Anthony Blunt," the new coming chuckled.

"Soviet Spy. Member of the Cambridge Five. Interesting choice."

"I figured it was poetic, since you sent me to carry out espionage for you and all."

"You are a spy, are you not?"

"For Queen and Country, not elder brothers."

"I'm a British citizen. Does that not make me country?"

"_You_ are dead," Q reminded him. "If MI-6 was at the beck and call of every dead Englishman, we'd have sorted out the Ghosts of Hampton Court Palace a long time ago."

Sherlock snorted and leaned back in his chair, his fingers pressed together as though, banter complete, he was waiting for a full report. Q was quick to interpret this change in intent.

"He still mourns you."

"Does he?"

"Of course. You should have seen him when he first saw me. Mistook me for you and turned white as a sheet. I thought he was going to soil himself. Oh, and almost all of your crap is gone, except the violin he begged Mycroft to let him keep."

"It's not 'crap'. Do not mistake something for useless just because you do not understand it's purpose," Sherlock snapped. "And what a pity. Such a beautiful instrument, wasting away." Sherlock pretended to be annoyed, but Q knew him well enough to detect the sense of pride in his voice that indicated he was pleased that John still thought highly enough of him to cling to the violin.

"Not quite wasting away," Q corrected. "He's learned how to play it. Or at least he's trying to."

"Has he? Interesting."

"He still uses his cane, which Mycroft no doubt already told you, and he has a girlfriend – Mary – which you know doubt already know about too. But I did discover that he has plans to ask her to marry him soon, if he has not already."

"He told you that, did he?"

"Of course not. But while I am more of a technical genius than a detective, I _do _still know how to read people like you and Mycroft. At least to some extent. It was an unavoidable skill, growing up with you two."

"Then tell me, from what you read his impending wedding plans?"

"Every few minutes he would touch his face with his left ring finger," Q informed Sherlock proudly.

"Excellent deduction, little brother, there can be absolutely no doubt as to what that means. Unless of course it means that he has developed a nervous tick, a patch of dry skin, or perhaps was simply itchy." Sherlock smirked self-indulgently.

"You know, you've started to grow even more insufferable than usual as of late, and that's a big one for you. I don't know why I ever try to do you favors."

"It's hard to exercise my mind when you keep me in this coffin. God, I feel like I actually am dead. Or I will be, if I don't get out of this apartment soon. And now I've deigned to sending out my secret agent little brother on reconnaissance missions for me. It's absolutely preposterous."

"If the shame of extorting me for help becomes too much of you, I can always return to my actual job which, contrary to popular belief, is actually a matter of national security." Q turned and began walking towards the door, silently counting under his breath to ten, waiting for the moment when Sherlock would –

"No wait! Don't go, I need to know what is happening," Sherlock demanded. Q took one more step towards the door. "_Please_."

At the magic word, Q whirled back around and returned to his brother, ready to recount the rest of his visit. "He's still jumpy about being attacked. He keeps his gun by his armchair where he reads or types on his computer– I could tell by where his eyes jumped when I asked him if he carried weapons – and I think he half expects Moriarty to return and do to him what he did to you. So much for buying the lies of Richard Brook." Q let that sink in for a moment before moving on. "He's actually eating very well. I'd wager much better than he ever ate when he lived with you. I think his Mary is mostly responsible for that. She's also left-handed. I could tell by the—"

"Contents of the fridge, no doubt," Sherlock interrupted.

"Yes, we all know you're very good and clever. Won't you please let me finish my story?"

Sherlock pouted, but it was the silent pouting Q could talk over.

"I do think he's happy. Not all the time, and certainly not when he remembers you, but happy none-the-less. There were pictures, on the wall, and he was smiling in them."

"Everyone smiles in pictures, that's the magic of photography."

"No," Q insisted. "Really smiling. Being a serious doctor, in a long-term relationship, eating good food, it all suits him. Oh, and I forgot to tell you the best part."

Q paused in his story telling, cheekily attempting to build the suspense. Sherlock waited, maintaining his bored expression, until the waiting became unbearable.

"What is it? Tell me!" If there was one thing Sherlock hated, it was people talking slowly.

"He reconnected with one of his old war buddies. They met for lunch today. I had the pleasure of becoming reacquainted with him."

"Certainly not…"

"John and 007 appear to be quite good friends now. I guess it was always better to have a field agent out on your spy missions than the tech guy."

**End Note: Thanks for reading! R&R if you liked it, hated it, want more, or want me to never write another word of Bondlock fanficition. Also, I'd love to know if you thought my characters were mostly in-character. I've watched Sherlock far more times and more recently than Skyfall, so I'm especially sorry if Q and Bond are nothing like themselves. **

**(Note: I'm too noncommittal to pick a real name for Q, and I didn't think there was a real reason Sherlock ever needed to mention it in their dialogue, so he remains nameless in my AU canon)**


End file.
